President Obama on Friday said the U.S. government is “not as prepared” as it should be to respond to disruptions caused by computer or Internet attacks and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff.

The still-to-be-named coordinator will oversee a new bureaucracy tasked with digital infrastructure protection, which had previously been handled by the Department of Homeland Security. “We will ensure that these networks are secure, trustworthy and resilient,” Obama said. “We will deter, prevent, detect, and defend against attacks and recover quickly from any disruptions or damage.”

Obama’s announcement, which was expected, came as the president released the outcome of a 60-day review that sought to rethink how the federal government should address cybersecurity. Business groups had sought to raise cybersecurity’s profile in the administration but remained wary about regulatory mandates from Washington; security hawks would prefer the new bureaucracy to have more authority over the private sector.

The final report represents a political compromise. It suggests “intrusion detection and prevention systems” and “warning of cyber intrusions and attacks,” while stressing that collaboration with privacy groups and industry is vital. New laws compelling companies to share more information with the federal government about intrusions may be necessary, it says, but only “as a last resort.”

During his remarks in the White House’s East Room on Friday, Obama also seemed to seek a balance between warning of the dangers of terrorists or other miscreants using the Internet and saying the government will not go too far. “Our pursuit of cybersecurity will not — I repeat, will not include — monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic,” he said.

The report also goes out of its way to recognize the civil liberties concerns that could arise by a greater focus on private networks: the word “privacy” appears no fewer than 69 times in the document.

In a cybersecurity “crisis,” the plan is for the coordinator to become the “White House action officer for cyber incident response.” That’s a similar role to the White House officials who help to monitor terrorist attacks or natural disasters. (The new coordinator’s fiefdom will be shared between the National Economic Council and the National Security Council.)

While there has been some private grumbling that the new coordinator will not report directly to the president — a prized symbol of access in Washington circles — reaction to the administration’s announcement was generally positive.

Senators John Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), members of the Commerce and Intelligence committees, said in a statement that “no other president in American history has elevated this issue to that level and we thank (Obama) for his leadership.” The Center for Democracy and Technology said it “is evident that the report’s authors listened to the concerns of privacy and civil liberties groups.”

Cybersecurity headaches

The origin of many of the feds’ cybersecurity headaches can be traced back to the process that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security nearly seven years ago. Politicians in Washington, D.C. decided to glue together a medley of federal agencies to create a massive bureaucracy that would, as one of its new goals, provide a better focus on cybersecurity.

“The department will gather and focus all our efforts to face the challenge of cyberterrorism,” President Bush said when signing the 500-or-so-page bill into law in November 2002. “This department will be charged with encouraging research on new technologies that can detect these threats in time to prevent an attack.”

Some tasks might benefit from centralization in one of the world’s largest bureaucracies. But it soon became evident that cybersecurity was not one of them. By 2005, government auditors concluded that the department failed to live up to its cybersecurity responsibilities and may be “unprepared” for emergencies; as recently as last fall, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said his agency needed to develop a plan to respond to a “cybercrisis.”

That led some outside groups to argue that cybersecurity efforts should be taken over by the National Security Agency, which already is responsible for protecting government computers through its “information assurance” arm, or perhaps the White House staff.

Lending an unusual spice to what would normally be a quiet, internecine power struggle was March’s resignation of Rod Beckström, director of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity Center. In his farewell letter, Beckström blasted what he said was an NSA power grab, saying the secretive military agency “effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions.”

The week before Beckström’s resignation, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair suggested to a House committee that the NSA was ready for the job, saying “there are some wizards out there at Fort Meade.” But a few weeks later, after a congressional hearing that was hardly enthusiastic about the idea, NSA director Keith Alexander denied his agency had any interest in the job.

In February, Obama ordered a 60-day review of the federal government’s cybersecurity efforts, and appointed Hathaway — who had worked for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration — to lead it.

In addition, The New York Times reported on Friday that the Pentagon is preparing a new military command for cyberspace that would operate in parallel with the civilian effort that Obama is expected to announce. He is “expected to sign a classified order in coming weeks that will create the military cybercommand” and recognize “that the United States already has a growing number of computer weapons in its arsenal and must prepare strategies for their use,” the newspaper said.

During Friday’s remarks, Obama noted that his campaign had been the subject of a cyber intrusion in which hackers accessed policy papers and travel plans but not fundraising data.

Source: CNET News – by Declan McCullagh

Google is getting some major national exposure for both its AppEngine platform and Google Moderator, a simple tool that helps groups determine which questions should be asked at all hands meetings, conferences, Q&A sessions, etc. The White House is using Moderator, hosted on AppEngine, to determine which questions President Obama should answer at an online Town Hall meeting on Thursday.

In just a few hours 6,932 people have submitted 7,037 questions and cast 236,048 votes on the site. The top question, based on votes so far, is “As a student, who like so many others works full time and attends school full time, only to break even at the end of the month. What is the government doing to make higher education more affordable for lower and middle class families?”

Google also hosts the President’s video message for the meeting, on YouTube. I’m surprised he’s not wearing a Google tshirt, too. Google should be paying him an endorsement fee for all this promotion (Obama previously used Moderator for his Change.gov transition site).

See our recent coverage of Google Tip Jar, which also uses Moderator.

The White House has launched Recovery.gov, a site that intends to bring transparency to the government spending authorized in the $787 billion economic package the president signed Tuesday.

“The size and scale of this plan demand unprecedented efforts to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending,” President Obama says in an introductory video on the site. “The important decisions about where taxpayer dollars will be invested will be yours to scrutinize.”

The site includes charts that break down how the money in the legislation will be distributed. As federal agencies distribute funds, those allocations will be added to the site. A map of the country shows the number of jobs the legislation is expected to create in each state. The site also has a separate page explaining the president’s call for transparency, as well as an “about” page that summarizes the bill and provides a timeline of its progress.

Visitors can sign up for e-mail updates and are encouraged to share through a comment form on the site how their lives have been affected by the economic downturn.

The site also gives a link to the full text of the bill.

Source: CNET News – by Stephanie Condon